Jennifer

Hello! I am a new teacher and a recent graduate of Heritage University and I am excited and eager to begin my career as an educator..I am looking for a change in scenery and new experiences, so I just moved from my hometown of Kennewick, Washington. I am so excited to be living in beautiful Northwest Washington! I hold a Masters degree in teaching with an endorsement in elementary education. I am highly qualified in middle level science, middle level mathematics, and Japanese. I have five years of experience in working with students from diverse populations, both here in Washington and abroad in Japan and South Korea. I also have 2 years of experience serving as a literacy tutor and community volunteer for the Regional Service Corps AmeriCorps. Through my studies at Heritage University I have received training in GLAD strategies, differentiated instruction, "Love and Logic" classroom management, formative classroom assessment, and inquiry-based science instruction. I completed my student teaching assignment in a 6th grade life science classroom where I based my lessons around the Washington state standards and the FOSS science kit program. I believe that it is an educator's most important task to help children gain a love for learning. If learning is fun, hands-on, and informative, it will be more likely that students will take an active role in their education and strive to reach further. As Rudolf Dreikurs said, “The development of a child's potential depends on the ability of the teacher to perceive the child's possibilities, to stimulate the child to learn, and thereby make the child's latent potentiality a reality.” When I taught elementary school in Korea, it quickly became apparent that Korean students were not being taught to question and think for themselves. Students in Korea were taught to memorize information. They were not taught how to think critically or to ask questions. They were taught to be obedient and to trust what their elders told them. I was shocked because this was against everything that I believed an education should be. I want my students to think outside the box and to think critically. I do not want my students to believe everything I tell them just because I am the teacher. I don't want my students to just accept things that they do not fully understand. I want my students to question me if they think I am wrong, do their own research, and decide what they believe is true based on their own experiences and observations. These will be the most important lesson that I teach my students. I believe that for a child to be truly successful in life it is important that they have a strong sense of what is right and wrong, the ability to think critically and to ask questions, the heart to care for those around them, and a love for learning. I will strive to help my students become successful, not only in their studies, but also in their path to becoming responsible, caring adults. This is my goal as an educator. As John Steinbeck once wrote, “I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.”